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Eavestrough Faerie Haven
When the crash of the sector power grid sent a flood of galactic refugees pouring outward from God City, the infusion of large quantities of extra-Vanthian technology disrupted many of the magical ecosystems that had existed on Vanth for thousands of years. In particular, the denizens of the Faerie kingdoms suffered from the presence of phasic technology, which reacted unpredictably with the magics of the diminutive nature sprites. Though numerous mushroom villages, tree-castles, and lake-bottom estates can still be found scattered all over Vanth, holding out against the presence of alien technology, the Eavestrough Faerie Haven has come to represent the last true bastion of the olde Faerie folke against the coming Phasic twilight. Founded by King Pinkbottom Bellywiggle of Tinkledown, the Faerie Haven of the formerly-teensy Principality of Eavestrough is home to thousands and thousands and thousands of pixies, trows, bogies, boggarts, brownies, corrigans, spriggans, pookas, knockers, pechs, greenies, redcaps, will-the-wisps, and many other tribes of the Wee Folk. It is an enchanted community just off the trade road that crosses the Deadly South Mountains, consisting of countless gingerbread cottages, toadstool towers, candy-cane skyscrapers, and castles spun from dreams. Behind the facade of frivolity, high-jinks, frolicking, and merrymaking, all is not well; many denizens complain of a lack of such staples as moonbeams, dewdrops, four-leaf clovers, and thistledown, and the incidents of fay-on-fay pranks and drive-by shenanigans has grown sevenfold. The recent ill-fated Leprechaun Rebellion revealed a growing dissatisfaction with the cuddly-wuddly monarch's increasingly totalitarian regime. King Pinkbottom's isolationist, anti-technological stance has had a negative impact upon his kingdom's economic status; demand for exports such as acorn-cups, fairy dust, and enchanted dancing slippers has fallen, which has made the cost of such imports as baby's laughter and happy thoughts prohibitive. This may be the result of the royal edict of zero tolerance for tresspassing on Faerie Haven soil; interlopers are greeted with showers of faerie darts, tricked into joining faerie dances, led astray from their paths, and lured into enchanted slumber in cozy little dells. King Pinkbottom's Minister of Defence, Old Jenny Ironteeth, has implemented an even more stringent policy of gobbling up bad little boys and girls, grabbing the ankles of anyone who stands too close to the stream and pulling them under, and souring milk higgledy-piggledy. She has repeatedly refused to confirm or deny knowledge of the eerie wailing whenever someone near is doomed to die, huge piles of freshly-gnawed human bones, trees draped with steaming entrails, skeletal figures with blood-red eyes and huge sickles lurking in the shadows, and the howling of the damned that some travellers have reported. Faerie Haven's dealings with the Waepeta Sorcerer Palisade to the south have alarmed some political scientists and oracular livestock (such as the Singing Pig of Fettlebury). An alliance between these two technology-shunning, magically-based city-states would be a potent threat to the Realm of the Hobling Emperor. However, King Pinkbottom's xenophobic tendencies might also preclude such a union. Indeed, Eavestrough Faerie Haven may prove to be a stepping stone to Waepeta's own much-rumored plans for world domination. Category:Vanth